FFXI isn't complex. There are a lot of abilities yes, most if not all on 1-5 minute cooldowns making for a completely different combat experience. The game was *difficult* in the past if you lacked access to gear, spells, or groups but that has largely been done away with now that they have trusts and easier ways of gearing up as you level. The difficulty there is whatever you make it.

This game has gone through various eras of job design. Some were better than others. Streamlining for the sake of convenience and removing clunkiness like stance dancing or downright bizarre abilities like Flash and Tri-Bind is a good thing. Taking away the Samurai fun power up button was an enormous miscalculation, with whatever they meant to eventually replace it with being too far in the future of 7.0 to warrant its removal now.

In terms of my preferred difficulty level to base "normal" around I'd be happy with Titania/Hydaelyn and less annoying mechanics like the one boss from Vanaspati that causes "misdirection" - easily the worst status effect in the game. The game does a bad job of preparing some players for these fights though, partly due to the fact that higher level players are the ones who carry them through the bulk of story content up until Shadowbringers.

I do believe that more solo-oriented players will benefit more from future Trust additions simply because they do not, in fact, coddle lower skilled players. If you mess up more than 3 times in Trust, that's it. It forces somewhat of a learning curve onto them that isn't present in Duty Finder. Sadly, a lot of high level players do not realize this and continue to rally against the system despite it ultimately being more beneficial than harmful.